‘She did kill. There’s no grey area there’: Labour MP Naz Shah on the day she and her mother were arrested for murder

Naz Shah found it thrilling when she was arrested on suspicion of murder. “I’ll be honest with you, I had fun. It was the most excitement I’d ever had in my flipping life. I’d never been to a police station before. I was 18 and wet behind the ears. I was this really sheltered kid who’d been arrested. And I was like, they’ve got it wrong, so in my head it was all going to be over soon,” the MP for Bradford West says. “They took my clothes and gave me this white suit to wear, and I was saying, ‘Ooh, I look foxy in this, don’t I? Can you imagine taking me on a date in this?’ I was having a right laugh with the police officers. Honestly, I was so naive.”

Shah’s beloved “Uncle” Azam had died unexpectedly in April 1992. An autopsy revealed that he had been poisoned with arsenic. Shah and her mother, Zoora, who spoke little English, had cooked the previous night’s supper. They were arrested and taken to different police stations. Shah was released. Zoora admitted that she had made the dessert that contained the arsenic. After a month-long trial, she was convicted of Azam’s murder in December 1993 and sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The excitement Shah had felt at the police station didn’t last long. She tried to kill herself twice following her mother’s conviction. But she is one of life’s great survivors. Despite leaving school at 12, being forced into an arranged marriage at 15, and having to bring up her two younger siblings after her mother was jailed, she became a celebrated campaigner, held down high-powered jobs and has been a member of parliament for 11 years. “It’s an interesting life I’ve had,” she says.

Over the next couple of hours, I discover Shah has a fine line in understatement. She was six when her wife-beating, heroin-dealing father traded in her mother for a younger model, and the shame it brought on the family led indirectly to her mother’s conviction.

Shah’s story has always been central to her relationship with the community. Before running against George Galloway in Bradford West in 2015, she published a blog about her family’s history: if she didn’t own her story, it was ripe for exploitation. But then she was telling it as a campaigner who had fought for her mother. Now she’s telling it in a profoundly personal way, as someone who lived through those horrors and was shaped by them.

Her memoir is called Honoured because she is honoured to be an MP, to have survived it all, and at its heart is the Islamic concept of izzat, Arabic for honour. But the book is as much about its bleak antithesis – dishonour. In her culture, a family without izzat is worthless. The day her father walked out, they lost it – and her mother’s attempt to regain it had terrible repercussions.

We’re at her Bradford home, a lovely stone cottage. There’s a fire roaring, her cat Ruby is juggling a couple of sticks and Shah is making us a cup of tea. I’ve arrived early and she’s not quite ready. “Give me a few minutes. D’you want some fruit? Should I put the telly on for you? Make yourself at home.” I sit marvelling at Ruby’s dexterity and at how Shah turned her life around.

Soon she’s back, fully made up, pack of fags in hand. “D’you mind if I smoke? When the kids are here, I can’t smoke in the house.” Shah has three children with her second husband, from whom she is